


Overlapping Corkscrews

by East_Renee



Category: American Horror Story: 1984, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: An AU where 1984 is like the karmic aftermath of Apocalypse, Multi, religious blasphemy which really should not surprise anyone, spoilers up to episode 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 23:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20825567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/East_Renee/pseuds/East_Renee
Summary: Where AHS 1984 is a continuation of AHS Apocalypse.





	Overlapping Corkscrews

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all in one go right after watching episode 2 so apologies if the writing’s a bit clumsy. I just couldn’t help myself. Please leave a comment if you like it!

Time takes the form of overlapping corkscrews, constantly spiraling down to nothing, to emptiness, only to jump midway into another spiral. This is why some things manage to pass through and translate into another time-frame, while other things stumble at the gap and stagnate, forgotten at the bottom. This is why Xavier Plympton’s first memory is someone telling him that he is a failure. He is a boy, his mother is drunk at the kitchen table, his father is gone (and doesn’t that feel awfully familiar for some reason), and he is sitting on the couch clenching the dirty fabric, white as a sheet, because he is a failure. A good-for-nothing failure, easily defeated, a whiny, sniveling boy who will never amount to anything. He is a failure and because of that, he will suffer. He hears this, hears the deep voice, hoarse and crackling, as if shouted through flames, and his heart drops to his stomach. 

He pees his pants. When his mother sobers up a bit, she screams. 

\-------------------------

Montana, as a child, has a face shining with contentment, but in the back of her mind lies a pool of resentment. This is wrong, why is she here, why must she be away from home again? And something answers: _You did not do enough. You gave into your hate and anger, and because of that, evil remains. You must fight it again. This is your penance. _And she screams and cries at night, waking up her parents over and over again, because this is not fair. She did what she was supposed to do, when can she finally rest? She cries at home, she cries at camp, but the awareness of that unfairness fades as she grows older, and when she hears the beat of the aerobics music for the first time, she jumps up and moves. 

Fight? Sure, she’ll fight. She’ll fight the system, she’ll fight the dumb conservative standards that society tries to force on her, she’ll be a rebel, she’ll be a slut, she’ll be whatever the hell she wants. 

\-------------------------

They crash into each other, literally; the first time, when she rear-ends him and the second time, when she runs over to apologize and trips over her own two feet, colliding in to his chest. When he holds her, there is a strong feeling of deja vu. 

But the two of them, both inexperienced souls in the grand scheme of things, take that as a sign of attraction, and a couple hours later, after sorting out their cars, they’re making out at the back of a building; hands claiming skin, lips claiming breath, like claiming like. 

_I know you from somewhere, I do. Why am I here? Because of you. _

\-------------------------

Brooke Thompson has a subservient nature, because fate is ironic like that. Just as before, being around her leads to nothing good, but this time she feels bad about it, bad enough to cry and retch onto the ground, bad enough to break out into cold sweats, bad enough to feel scared. She is always scared, always looking out nervously into the streets, as if someone’s watching her, as if someone’s trying to find her, and she cannot let that happen. 

(Sure, she’d made some amends at the end of her life, but not enough to make up for the harm she’d caused. That means it’s either hell or helping Satan’s spawn, and if she doesn’t do either then she’s living on borrowed time, so it only makes sense that she’s scared.) 

\-------------------------

Montana sees Brooke at the gym, and again there’s that deja vu, though it’s weaker this time. And once again, she puts it down as attraction, but tells herself that she’ll take it slower with this one—and probably just leave it at a sweet fuck, nothing too serious—things with Xavier didn’t end so well, after all. 

(The two of them broke up after a month of being attached at the hip, of feeling like they couldn’t breathe without one another. It was the strangest thing, all of the hurt that poured out of them when they were together. She hadn’t known she was capable of that. At times, Montana felt almost like a mother; Xavier cried, she soothed, he cried, and she soothed. He blustered like a child and she saw through him. And he’d see through her at the same time, skimming past the happy contentment and diving deep into the resentment. Scream, he’d tell her and she would, and he’d answer in turn. When they fucked, they’d end up with bruises and scratches on them both. She’d finish on top of him, feeling invincible.) 

_Then why did it end, why? _

(Three words. God and Satan. Actually three more words. Heavy past baggage.) 

\-------------------------

Richard Ramirez, the reason really for why all of this is happening, comes out of the womb (again) with poison already in his veins. He is born with the predilection for destruction and his environment, carefully chosen to encourage cruelty, pushes him the rest of the way. When he is six, his true father comes for him and he slits his first throat. He does not remember his past life, but he doesn’t need to, he just needs to listen to the voice in his head, Satan’s voice. _Hurt, kill, pillage, and rape. Kill the wench who tried to defeat us before. Succeed where your brother failed. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. _He lashes out with anger and carries out the carnage as he sees fit. 

(He is like a child. He is a child.) 

His father leads him to Brooke. It’s been a month since her fiance turned their wedding into a double murder and suicide, and he finds her alone, still in shock, unable to sleep, with no one willing to comfort her. “The world is cruel,” he tells her, “so why shouldn’t we be also be cruel? Are we not following what the world has taught us?” She stares at him, trying to deny the truth of his words. “I’m going to cleanse this world,” he says, “and I need your help.” 

The arrangement works... until she runs away. He wouldn’t be that pissed off, except she’s taken the jewelry too, the jewelry he stole off his victims, and he needs that for money. And a part of him’s annoyed that he ever let her get the better of him in the first place. So he chases her, raging mad. 

He’s never had someone come to life after he’s killed them though. That startles him. There’s something more at play here. This time, his father leads him to Margaret Booth. It’s the strangest thing: she’s not afraid of him. She understands freedom. She understands <strike>God </strike>Satan. (It is not a great stretch to swap one for another.) 

She tells him to kill Mr. Jingles for the children. His father tells him to kill Mr. Jingles for the fulfillment of his final goals. See, they’re both in agreement. 

\-------------------------

Margaret Booth _is _a servant of God. At least, of the God in her mind. (But no, actual God, omniscient being in the heavens, is also watching over her, even though she has gone awry. She owes his daughter two life debts after all and even if she’s not planning to, she will pay them back.) Fate strikes again with its sardonic sense of humor and she grows up in a family that thanks the Lord for granting them the necessities they need to live and dares not ask for anything more. She is taught rules, she is taught boundaries, and the first thing she learns is that she cannot be selfish. But oh, she is selfish. And that’s not a bad thing, everyone is a bit selfish, but when that selfishness is repressed so tightly, it explodes in an act of bloody righteousness. Only when she looks down at the corpses and feels the light on her face, does a smile grow on her lips. The law cannot find her guilty, bars cannot contain her, she is _free _just as the Lord intended. 

So yes, she does understand the dark, brooding boy who she finds in her room, who says he follows Satan and kills because of it. You can do anything you want, if you have God and trauma on your side, and this boy has plenty of that. She knows a lost soul when she sees one. She doesn't always care about them, but this one is intriguing, this one is powerful, this one she wants on her side. 

\-------------------------

Poor, poor Jonas Shevoore is not meant to be here. He has no particular reason to be here, nor does Ray, Chet, Rita, Trevor, or even Mr. Jingles, but again, overlapping corkscrews. Things don’t always fit perfectly, but Satan makes do. Jonas is killed and buried on the grounds of Camp Redwood, which is just his luck, because that means his ghost is stuck there, unlike the other lucky victims whose carcasses were carted away from the place. But Satan keeps that soul asleep, only to awaken when his first son, the failure, drives by. 

Later, Xavier will cry, “This is all my fault,” and he won’t know how right he is. 


End file.
